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Preeti Pandey

With aspirants faking credentials to land that cushy job, HR managers are having to keep an eye out for the rogue candidate.

BEWARE the next time you present your credentials to the HR manager for that plum job in a blue-chip IT firm — you just might find yourself spied on.

All thanks to a handful of people who present a laundry list of IT skills just to earn big bucks and a trip to the promised land via H1-B visas, human resource departments across the IT industry have tightened the screws on scanning prospective candidates.

How they cheat

According to a cross-section of HR professionals, both in the IT and ITeS sectors, the modus operandi frequently used by these aspiring software professionals includes CVs naming Tier-I companies they have never worked for; fake degree certificates especially for niche skill-sets, including SAP and Cisco certification; and inflated experience stints — even to the extent of "telling us they worked for say, two years at a big IT organisation when in reality they had actually worked there for a brief spell on a project," complains Sushil Tayal, Director - HR, LogicaCMG.

Most HR managers that eWorld spoke to concurred, adding that their organisations too were unwittingly being used in this rogue strategy to land a cushy job.

In addition to the challenges plaguing the HR departments, the increasing use of fake experience and degree certificates is beginning to lengthen the hiring cycle. And for companies facing tight deadlines and client pressure to complete projects, there is nothing much "we can do when we fall short of a candidate for a certain project and we face flak from the client. It all boils down to business in the end and so even when we know that a certain candidate has lied to us about his credentials if his performance is up to par we keep him on (the company rolls)," remarks a HR head.

"It's a open secret that fake credentials are being used to bag jobs, and this issue often crops up when we meet up with HR managers from other IT companies," adds Padma Vani, HR Head, Aventail.

Magnitude of problem

Factors such as unrealistic compensation for suitable candidates, high attrition rates hovering between 16 and 20 per cent, demand exceeding supply, global MNCs such as Accenture and SAP vying with Indian bigwigs such as Infosys and Wipro for the cream of the software talent, and the not-so-well-established brands, such as Logica, also trying to attract these geeks have escalated the problem, according to several HR managers.

By way of illustrating this point, Aventail's Padma says a sub-mid-management software professional with five years-plus experience commanded a pay packet in the Rs 5-7 lakh bracket two years ago. Now the same candidate expects Rs 12 lakh with additional benefits.

Stringent selection

With large-scale hiring across the spectrum of the Indian IT industry, the only way out for firms is to put in place a stringent selection process. But first check out these numbers to understand the magnitude of hiring currently taking place.

During 2005, between 45,000 and 50,000 people are expected to shift jobs (lateral hires in industry parlance, meaning experienced people are moving to new jobs or up the ladder); 35,000-45,000 freshers are likely to be recruited; and on a monthly basis, 2,500 jobs are up for grabs, estimates Gautam Sinha, CEO of IT recruitment firm TVA Infotech.

According to Sinha, the number of people landing jobs with fake certificates and inflated figures is 0.5 per cent of the total software population. "Compared to the 1998-99 period when the going rate (purchase price) for degree certificates was in the Rs 2-8 lakh range, depending on the degree, due to the craze for H1-B visas, these instances have come down thanks to a reduction in demand in the US market. Even though this does not sound much, to put it in perspective, of every 200 candidates at least five have shown fake credentials," he says.

How to tackle

What this means for the HR departments is the additional headache of having to scrutinise a candidate's profile, even that of a fresher. Since this is not feasible, most HR heads prefer to outsource this to a recruitment agency.

"Where large-scale ramp-ups are involved most IT firms choose third-party HR agencies to source employees due to the logistics factor and also for niche skills," says Ranjana Joshi, HR Head, Persistent Systems Pvt Ltd.

With 1,500 people on board, Pune-based Persistent has firmed up plans to grow to 3,000 by end-2005. Ditto for LogicaCMG, which plans to up headcount to 2,300 by the year-end compared with the 1,200-strong team at present.

For third-party recruitment firms, this is proving to be a windfall, giving them an advantage over online job sites, which according to Sinha are not equipped to filter a candidate's profile like an offline HR recruitment agency.

Recruitment firms have taken to tried and tested methods such as checking a candidates' antecedents: cross-checking with previous employees and HR managers and even going to a candidate's college to ensure the authenticity of the credentials.

The employee reference

However, most IT enterprises have come up with an employee referral programme to supplement these verification methods. The IT company gives an incentive to employees who refer prospective employees and the incentives are given after a timeframe to ensure that the new recruit stays on with the firm. In case of a BPO firm, the incentive is upwards of Rs 5,000; Rs 20,000 and beyond for a software services firm; and Rs 50,000 and upwards for a product company.

"Employees do the dipstick check themselves, so we do not have to worry about fake credentials. In spite of this we do our regular verification. And while hiring senior management and mid-management professionals, we also do a market dipstick to check their behaviour and cultural attitude, since these people would also front-end the company's business," says Sameer Khanna, Compensation Benefits Manager, Logica.

And for those who are still keen on riding Lady Luck and tampering with their credentials, a word of warning. It will not be long before the IT firm you have applied to sends a sleuth to your home, previous working company and the university you passed out from to check if what you have stated is true or not. Some organisations have already started to use such services offered by research firms and detective agencies.

And if your credentials are fake, then be prepared to get blacklisted from the database of prospective candidates that some IT firms are looking to create.

preetipandey@thehindu.co.in

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